How-To Guide: Monk
Bulletproof Monk To this day, I still wonder why they call these brutal, fist-fighting jobs of absolute death and destruction “monk”. I mean, I thought Monks were peaceful and loving, not being one of the world’s best damage-dealers. Oh well. Anyway, Monk is possibly the most single-minded damage-dealers in the game. It can only effectively sub one support job (a second one in end-game scenarios), it doesn’t get any more than one main weapon (again, with exceptions of end-game scenarios), and it doesn’t get any magical spells. It does, however, get some of the most powerful weapon skills in the game. At Lv.3, Lv.41, and Lv.70, it gets debatably the best weapon skills in the entire game. The job also gets some cool job abilities that can really help their party out. They pull a lot of hate towards themselves, but have a lot of defensive means to their own, such as Counter, Dodge, Chakra, and the highest overall HP and vitality out of any job in the game. The only thing holding them back from tanking is their cloth armor. All-in-all, it’s an absolutely great job, and an asset to any heavily-damaging party. Please note: This is only a guide. Please add anything if it is needed, and take away anything that is either untrue or not needed. Job-Race Combinations Please note that race is the absolute last thing you should worry about when picking a job. Anything said here is seriously exaggerated. A single piece of gear can often make up for a race's negligible lack in a stat. Every race also gets "Race Specific Equipment", or "RSE", that will boost a race's stats to equal, or possibly even surpass other races. Hume * As a Hume Monk, you can deal a nice, long stream of damage without pulling extravagant amounts of hate towards yourself. If you do, you have high enough HP, vitality, and agility to keep yourself alive. Average accuracy levels means more damage as well as more frequent Counters. Average mind means you can have a high level of Chi Blast damage as well. Like for all jobs, Hume does great in all aspects. Elvaan * An Elvaan’s stats are basically made for Monk in almost every way. Of the four main stats a Monk needs (strength, dexterity, vitality, and mind), Elvaan excel in three of them. Playing as an Elvaan Monk, you’ll enjoy high damage per hit, highly damaging Chi Blast, high defense, high HP regenerated through Chakra, and a very high level of HP. Your biggest downside to Elvaan Monk is losing out on dexterity and agility, meaning low evasion and accuracy. Tarutaru * Tarutaru Monks enjoy a healthy balance of damage over time and high-damage weapon skills, as well as superb defense through Counters, Guards, and evasion. As a Tarutaru Monk, you won’t have to worry as much about taking hate when you don’t want to. You can safely build up TP with your high accuracy, and then unleash a higher-damaging weapon skill to either open or close a very powerful skillchain. Though your Chakra and Chi Blast will suffer, Taru Monks do great on the battlefield. Mithra * Looking good on the battlefield, Mithra Monks are a lot like Tarutaru, who build up TP easily and then unleash a fury of Raging Fists. Mithra have amazing dexterity, and decent strength. Like Humes, they have fairly balanced stats in the long run. There is a lot of attack gear in the game to make-up for their detriment in mind and even vitality. Race-specific equipment is also good for boosting low stats. Galka * A Galka Monk has the absolute highest HP in the entire game. Though it’s not a significant stat for Monk, it’s amazing watching just how much they have. Galka also enjoy a very high vitality to not only protect that HP, but to also help bring it back with Chakra. Galka Monks have high strength, very high vitality, and great mind and dexterity. In the long run, they too have amazing stats like Elvaan. They also look darn cool on the battlefield with arms bigger than most characters in general. Equipment Choices Weapon * Monks have one primary weapon that they use in nearly every single scenario you’ll ever see them in. As fist-fighters, it’s not hard to believe they use hand-to-hand knuckles, cesti, katars, and patas. Hand-to-hand composes the most-used blunt weapons in the game, even though a lot of them look sharp. Blunt weapons have a lot of monsters with resistances, but they also deal a ton more damage on monsters like skeletons, who have a very terrible resistance to all blunt weapons. This gets Monks into a lot of “bones parties”, which basically means they fight nothing but skeletons or other blunt-weak monsters. Hand-to-hand is different from other weapons because they don’t have a set damage or delay. They simply add to the damage and delay of your natural bare hands. This means that as you level up, you get a much more noticeable delay reduction to other weapons, since the job trait “Martial Arts” reduces delay every number of levels. It also makes calculating damage per second very, very difficult, so it’s hard to compare weapons. Hand-to-hand also gets some of the most amazing weapon skills in the game. Since multi-hit weapon skills generally tend to be the higher damaging ones, their first weapon skill is one of the best of its level. At a very early level, 41, Monks also get Raging Fists, another of the best weapon skills in the game until 70, when Asuran Fists is your trump card. However, Monks also have a decent skill level in staves/poles, which means they can deal fair damage with long sticks, but that’s not really very useful until the Primate Staff and Kirin's Pole for end-game use. Armor * Monks don’t get anything very high-defense during early to mid levels. They are still good at tanking at early levels from lv10 to lv30-40. There are some armor for Mnk that have high defense rating that even surpass similar heavy armor but those are at much higher levels. Monks seem to only get cloth gear like far-eastern wear, cloaks, robes, and harnesses. This isn’t all bad, however, since far-eastern wear can be very powerful at times, namely with Jujitsu Gi, and Federation Kyahan. At Lv.25, Monks get access to Bastokan or Republic Subligar. You will end-up using that until 60 guaranteed. No other piece of equipment (including AF) gives stats as useful as +5 Attack and a boost to vitality. Unfortunately, it means male characters have to show off their legs, which can be disturbing at times. In fact, your artifact armor isn’t useful for anything other than macroing in for the use of certain job abilities. There is, however one other piece of equipment better than the Republic Subligar: the Strike Subligar at Lv.60. Get them if you can afford them. Walkthrough Soloing 1 to 10 * Monk doesn’t even get a weapon when they start off in Final Fantasy XI. Instead, you get a white belt that gives strength +1. I strongly suggest picking-up either a pair of cesti or knuckles right away. Then, go out and start soloing. Monk gets to Lv.10 very quickly because of its high damage and overall natural defense. By hand-to-hand skill level 5, you are given the opportunity to finally use Combo, which is a very powerful weapon skill. Use it every time you get 100% TP and you’ll be good. You should also get signet before you go outside. It’ll allow you to rest without losing TP as well as give you a boost to the HP recovered while healing. At Lv.5, you get Boost, which can be used every fifteen seconds and can stack. Use it whenever you can, and especially just before you use Combo to boost your damage further. A Kenpogi +1 at Lv.8 is cheap and very useful until Lv.13. Pick one up if you can. Make habit of grabbing Signet before you go outside. Not only will it make soloing a lot easier through defense and evasion bonuses, but it will also allow you to rest HP without losing TP, and will also earn you conquest points with which to spend on items. Valkurm 10-20 * Before I say anything else, please keep this in mind when you level Monk throughout your game. Don’t use Boost every fifteen seconds!. The ability will cause you to attack slower and is more harmful than it is worth. It should only be used every 15sec when you are tanking. A Monk is a capable tank during these levels, be ready to take up the mantle to tank if the party request it. Combo still works amazingly in the Valkurm levels, and you should still use it every time you get 100% TP, unless your party has a skillchain set-up involving you. Picking up a Power Gi at Lv.13 will help out a lot. Other than that, any equipment can really be useful. If you have the money, Republic Knuckles are amazing and I would strongly suggest picking up a pair. At Lv.15, you get the job ability Dodge, which can help you evade some attacks if you take hate. Use it when it’s needed. It has a five-minute cool-down, so that means you would only get to use it once every two or three fights. Mid-levels 20-40 * Monk really does play the same role all throughout the game for the most part. You’ll continue getting more weapon skills all the time, as well as a bunch of new job abilities in these levels. 25 is Focus, which is a lot like Dodge, except it gives accuracy instead of evasion. 35 is Chakra, which will give you HP back depending on your vitality level. At 31, you get Martial Arts III, which really helps with delay, and Subtle Blow, which means the target doesn’t get as much TP while you’re attacking. In the long run, these twenty levels are where you’re gradually getting more and more anxious for Lv.41, when you get Raging Fists. Your AF Weapon * I’ve never met a Monk in the game who’s used their AF weapon for any reason at all. It really isn’t very good, but it’s still a prerequisite to get it done for your other AF, which is a lot more useful (at least in terms of macroing in for job abilities). You can simply delay this quest until after lv50. * Talk to Oggbi in Port Bastok E-6 to start your quest. Then, get a higher-level friend, buy a pickaxe, and head to Gusgen Mines’ basement at G-7. Search around for a ??? around the back of the room (not the one on the back of the shed in the room), and use your pickaxe to spawn a notorious monster ghost. Kill the ghost, collect the spoils, and take them back to Oggbi. Congratulations! You have your artifact weapon. Mid-High Levels 40-60 * Most Monks use Tourney Patas from Lv.40 until generally the Cross-Counters. But that’s not all the forties brings. Lv.41 is going to be your favourite level. If Monk was boring for you before, Raging Fists really should bring that fire back in your eye. It’s a very, very powerful weapon skill that just looks and sounds like the coolest thing ever. I love multi-hit weapon skills. I get excited seeing them- counting each individual hit. One- two- three- four- five! At the exact same time you get Raging Fists (before, if you haven‘t skilled-up hand-to-hand yet), you get a ranged job ability called Chi Blast which is enormously affected by your mind stat and how many times you’ve used Boost prior to using the job ability. It isn’t going to win any ‘damage of the year’ awards, but it should satisfy if you have a nice MND setup. You even get another job ability not any more than four levels later called Counterstance, which is a very luck-based job ability. It will instantly kill all of the defense bonuses from equipment or Protect, but multiply your Counter rate by roughly three times. Basically meaning, you get hit a lot less and deal a lot more damage, but if you do get hit, you get hit hard. Lv.51 is when you get Kick Attacks, which activates occasionally to give you an extra attack about once every ten attacks. These levels are also when you start getting your AF armor. It’s a very good idea to have, even though you’ll never wear any of it for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Your Artifact Armor * Your Artifact Armor is strange, because you never actually wear it, yet it’s still incredibly useful. How? You use it in macros for job abilities, since every piece affects one job ability one way or another. Your first piece is your AF feet armor acquired at Lv.52. They’re probably the only exception to the “only used for macro” rule. This exception only applies to people who don’t use Kung Fu Shoes. Otherwise, they’re only useful for when using Dodge, then taken off just after it’s used (the enhancement will still be in effect). The second piece is your AF gloves. These too can be useful if you don’t want to spend the time camping your Ochimusha Kote. Otherwise, just macro them in for using Boost. Your Lv.56 piece is your head piece, which is useful for both Chi Blast and Focus. Next, your body piece for 58, is very, very useful for Chakra. It gives a vitality boost and enhances the vitality modifier for Chakra, as well as allows it to remove certain harmful effects on you. Your Lv.60 and final piece is your leg piece. These are quite useless in any scenario from a damage-dealing standpoint, but should be macroed in for when you take hate, as they give a Guarding skill boost as well as a boost to Counter. Otherwise, stick with your Republic Subligar until your relic pants or buy a pair of Strike Subligar. High Levels 60-75 * These levels are where Monk has to become more careful on the damage it deals. The horror stories of Monks tearing hate away from even the best Paladins because they don’t know the hate threshold. Be very careful. At this point, your defense is far lower than any tank’s, but your damage is one of the highest in the game. You can take hate incredibly easily. These levels are where strength and attack become less wanted, and you want to build up TP secretly on the side until unleashing high-powered weapon skills to hopefully finish the target off. This may be the point in the game where having a Ninja support job may come in handy. Especially if your party’s main tank is a Ninja, it might be in your best interests to sub it, since pulling hate will happen very frequently. The unfortunate side being Ninja doesn’t really have a lot else to offer other than increased survivability. Thief is also a very viable support job if your party doesn’t already have one. In which case, you can deal ruthless damage while giving most of it to your party’s tank with Sneak Attack and Trick Attack. If you choose to sub Thief by Lv.65, you now also have the additional choice of using the Lv.65 ability Footwork, which makes all of your attacks into Kick Attacks, increasing damage and TP per hit, but also increasing delay between your attacks. If you have one of those really awesome boots for Monk, such as the Wulong Shoes or Dune Boots, monsters will be crying home to their mommies. End-Game * Monk’s primary role in the end-game scenario seems to be using Chi Blast with ludicrous amounts of mind-boosting gear and using Boost multiple times beforehand. With equipment such as Kirin's Osode and Kirin's Pole, you can unleash very powerful Chi. This becomes especially useful when the job trait Penance is merited, leaving the monster with a loss of 25% TP per hit. For Chi Blast you will simply use AF1 hands and every other piece of gear that has plus MND stat since the formula is MND * (#Boost * RandomNumber + 1) = DMG. the max amount of boosts you will do is 12, you can set up a macro to do them in sets of 3 to keep count better or just count everytime you boost, 1-5 seconds after your 12th boost it will wear depending on how quick you boost after each boost. Also for end game some times it is crucial that a monk will have to be one of the DD for a skillchain or that a Monk solo a placeholder or smaller version of the mob, the solo of a weaker version might be able to be done by another job but Monk is useful for this. * Dynamis - your primary role in Dynamis can range from being a attack leader to being just a Damage Dealer while assisting the main attack leader. Also on occasion a monk might have to solo a monster's pet such as wyvern or bird but it is very rare a dynamis LS will have you do this. * Salvage - since Monk has the highest Hand-to-Hand skill it is normal for a LS to have atleast one Monk as main attacker along with one Ninja. It is highly suggested that if you have Black Belt to get the cell for that piece so it is put to use. * Limbus - Depending on the zone you will just be a damage-dealer that assists the tank but on occasion might have to tank or sit back due to a mob's abilities. * Merit Party - for a damage-dealing Burn you will want 4 DD, 1 BRD, 1 RDM for optimal set up so that you are never stopping, there is no tank involved here so you will be subbing Ninja most likely and bouncing hate off each other and just moving from one mob to the next while the Bard pulls. For a tradtional party set up you will just play normally. Support Jobs Warrior * You’ll end up using Warrior as a support job almost all the time, which goes without saying. Having useful job abilities like Berserk and Warcry. If you take too much hate, switching Berserk for Defender allows you to take extra hits without worrying as much, and if a weaker party member is being attacked but your tank can’t steal hate back, Provoke may save some lives too. At Lv.50, Double Attack allows you to get an extra punch in every ten or so attack rounds. Unfortunately, due to the high damage output that Monk has later in the game, Monks will commonly have to sub Ninja in order to not kill themselves every time they weapon skill. Ninja * The reasons for subbing Ninja are for damage control and survivability. Ninja gives no job abilities or useful spells as a support job, and no job traits that actually affect a Monk. Utsusemi allows the Monk to reduce hate and survive an extra three attacks. Ninja support job eases your tank’s and your mages’ jobs later on in the game. Later in the game Monk/Ninja will be an effective tank in several events (such as salvage). Thief * An alternative to the Ninja support job. It offers dexterity and agility for critical hits, accuracy, and evasion. It also gives another boost to evasion with all of its bonus job traits. Other job traits include a Treasure Hunter and Gilfinder passive ability for easier money-making. Its most prominent use, however, is at Lv.60, Sneak Attack and Trick Attack can be used in conjunction to both deal insane amounts of damage and simultaneously give all of that hate to the tank in front of you. This not only means you can deal more damage in spikes, but higher damage over time because the tank also has a larger amount of enmity. White Mage * Subbing White Mage has one use: end-game Chi Blast spamming, since it will affect your mind stat. It also gives access to Blink and Stoneskin spells for survivability in such end-game events, and can help Raise if problems arise. This support job has no party uses or prominent soloing uses. It is basically the exact same thing as subbing Dark Knight to Red Mage for Stun-gunning. Dancer * The support job Dancer makes a Monk's HP almost limitless. When combining Monk's ability to attack fast, and the ability to absorb HP from the target with Drain Samba II (obtained at Lv.70), and not to mention Curing Waltz II (obtained at Lv.60), Monks can solo for hours without a hint of downtime. Due to Monk's already very high vitality, the Waltzes will always heal for max, and any equipment added for either vitality or charisma will quite immensely help break the soft cap. For Monks that sometimes see an issue with accuracy, Dancer also provides Accuracy Bonus. Dancer is possibly the best soloing support job, and a good alternate choice for parties as well. Monk as a Support Job * This is a much less-often used support job in the latter half of the game, but useful especially as a support job for early damage-dealers, and especially Warrior tanks. Monk provides a fairly large boost to HP and vitality, as well as the ability "Boost" for helping with damage a little bit. For jobs like Dancer who use hand-to-hand weapons early in the game, Monk's "Martial Arts" trait will help keep damage quite a bit higher. Overview of Job Abilities, Traits, and Spells Your Two-Hour Ability * Hundred Fists is said to be the best damage-dealing two-hour in the entire game, and that is totally without question. A constant stream of attacks without any delay in them aside from the animation delay, means a sickening amount of damage (and a sickening amount of enmity). It’s also common strategy to use this job ability at the end of a soloing session every time to kill at least one or two difficult monsters and chain their experience points together before logging out for the night. In parties, it can easily save the entire party in more than one way. For one possible way, you can just overpower the target monster and finish it off before it has a chance to wipe your party; this is especially useful with a Paladin that just used Invincible or a Thief that just used Accomplice and Perfect Dodge. However, if that isn’t the case, it can also help by directing all attention at you, since you’ll just be kicking the monster’s face inside-out with your weapon skills every five seconds. This leaves the party’s mages one single target. And with Dodge and Defender on, it can easily save you, and your party’s lives. Job Abilities *Boost is granted at the early level of 5 and is very useful all throughout the game. What it does is boosts your next attack (be it normal melee, a weapon skill, or the most prominent boost is in Chi Blast) by 12.5%, and can be used every fifteen seconds and can stack as many times as you can within its three-minute duration.. This is useful for use both while the puller is pulling, or just before unleashing a Chi Blast. It can also really help by acquiring hate, since it has half the cool-down of Provoke, and gives about one-sixth of the enmity Provoke does. This of course means it’s not a good idea to use consistently during a fight, though just before a weapon skill is wise, since you’ll probably pull hate anyway. With the Temple Gloves, the attack boost per Boost is raised to 18.75% *Dodge is a Lv.15 job ability that gives you two minutes of enhanced evasion that can be used again three minutes after it wears off (5 minutes total). It increases evasion by 20, or by 30 if you have your Temple Gaiters equipped at the time it is used. Since Monk doesn’t have a ton of defense, having a little extra evasion can really come in handy if you steal hate. It’s especially useful to use shortly after you use your two-hour ability, Hundred Fists. *Focus is a Lv.25 job ability that gives two minutes of enhanced accuracy that can be used three minutes after it wears off (five minutes total, like Dodge). It gives +20 to accuracy, or +30 with your Temple Crown equipped at the time it’s used. This job ability has a multitude of uses. The biggest use, of course, being it gives accuracy for getting TP and for multi-hit weapon skills that don’t have high accuracy on their own. It’s also useful for the use in conjunction with your two-hour ability, Hundred Fists, because it will mean you miss a lot less. Another big use for it is if you take hate and/or use Counterstance, since Counter’s activation is based on your accuracy compared to your opponent’s evasion. *Chakra is acquired at Lv.35. Its primary use is just to alleviate your healers’ job curing you. Unfortunately, it doesn’t heal a lot, even if you’re a Galka with high vitality. All it gives is HP equal to twice your vitality. Your artifact body piece, Temple Cyclas, increases the modifier to three times your vitality. With it equipped, it will also cure paralysis, assuming you aren’t stunned by the paralysis when used. *Chi Blast is earned as you hit Lv.41. With a three-minute cool-down timer, it can be used approximately once per fight, generally as an attack as the monster is just getting in range. It’s still quite short-ranged, however, so pulling with it isn’t a great idea. Its damage is enormously affected by the user’s mind stat and how many times Boost is used prior to unleashing the Chi. *Counterstance is yet another ability, but this one is earned at Lv.45. It strips off all defense bonuses from gear or Protect, leaving only your vitality’s natural defense and any effects from Bard’s Minne your only actual defense. On the other hand, though, Counterstance gives the user approximately three times the frequency to counter an opposing attack, making you not take any damage and attack back if successful. This shouldn’t be used in normal scenarios, only if Focus and Dodge are both active. It can be used at all times with a five-minute duration as well as re-use time. The ability well help you tank better with /NIN (you can counter while casting) and increase your damage by countering the mob. However, cannot counter range attacks or monster TP attacks, use with caution. *Footwork is an ability that turns every one of your attacks into Kick Attacks, thus increasing damage and TP for your attacks, while also adding a lot more delay between them. Resting on a five-minute timer and five-minute recast, it can be active forever. The only expense from using this ability is the doubling of spell timers, making Utsusemi from /NIN or any healing from /WHM pretty much useless. This ability works best when you need to hold back or for a boost to Weapon Skill damage (can help to create very high Dragon Kick damage). This ability is earned at Lv.65. *Mantra is one of two meritable job abilities. It gives everyone in the party an HP boost of 4%, but up to 20% with full merits. This has a very basic use, and isn’t overly useful because HP isn’t a game-breaking thing to have and because it has only a three minute duration with a ten minute cool-down. *Formless Strikes is a very useful job ability which converts all of your attacks partially into non-elemental magic damage. What this means is it makes your attacks more effective against physical damage resistant mobs, especially those in end-game situations using Invincible or other Physical Shield. Each additional merit gives it an extra 5% boost. Up to 25% of your attack damage can be converted into formless strikes. It has a three minute duration and ten minute recast. Job Traits *Martial Arts starts off all the way as early as Lv.1, and gets better and better as levels progress. What it does is lowers your attack delay for hand-to-hand weapon use. Without any Martial Arts trait, your base hand-to-hand delay is 480. With the first level, it reduces that delay by 80, and all subsequent traits (up to six) reduce it by an extra 20. This means that by 75, your base delay is merely 300. Also note that this reduction in delay affects TP like normal, so you will still get 100% in the same time. *Subtle Blow lowers the TP given to target monsters with each hit. Since that’s how most monsters get a lot of TP, this job trait is a lot better than people give it credit for. It reduces TP all the way up to 20% by Lv.75 with four upgrades starting at Lv.5. *Counter is another of Monk’s prime abilities. It helps it survive and makes it a great support job for any Warrior early on in the game. Counter uses accuracy as a modifier to occasionally nullify attacks and strike back with one punch (or one attack of any weapon, depending on what you are countering with). As long as you’re facing the enemy attacking you, it has a chance to prevent a number of attacks. *Max HP Boost further boosts Monk’s already ridiculously high HP by +30 at Lv.15 and 35, and +60 in both levels 55 and 70. In total, that’s 180 extra HP from simple passive traits. *Kick Attacks adds an occasional third attack to some hand-to-hand attacks, approximately 10% of the time. They’re as powerful as your normal hands without any weapon on them, but can be upgraded with hidden effects in boots such as Kung Fu Shoes. *Invigorate adds a Regen effect to Chakra, further increasing HP healed, and allowing you to last longer. The Regen granted is 10 HP per three seconds, lasting 24 seconds per upgrade (80 HP per upgrade). If fully merited, Invigorate can increase your Chakra by up to 400 HP over two minutes. *Penance adds an additional effect to Chi Blast that makes it useful in parties and even more useful in endgame. The additional effect is a TP inhibition effect which lowers the target’s TP gain by 25%. Each merit allows it to last an extra 20 seconds, up to 01:40 total. Since Chi Blast’s recast is 03:00 and can be brought down to a minimum of 2:45 with merits, you can potentially have it going 60% of the time! See Also